


do we not bleed

by celeste9



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff wasn't the easiest woman to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do we not bleed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/gifts).



> For lsellersfic (annariel)'s birthday, using 'burning heart' from the random prompt generator. Can be read as het or friendship. Title is from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t the easiest woman to know.

People thought she was cold, that she didn’t feel, that she cared for nothing.

Clint knew that was a lie. He had known it from their first encounter, when he’d been sent in to take her out.

The fact it was a lie was the reason he’d brought her in rather than put an arrow through her heart. Her warm, beating heart, as strong and fierce as the rest of her. Clint had seen it then, in her fight and drive, in the depths of her eyes.

Natasha kept her emotions tightly in check, held them close to her chest, but they were there. If you knew how to look, how to go beyond the hard edges to what was underneath. To the woman unbowed by what would break most.

Clint felt it was a privilege to know her, to be in her confidence. Natasha gave away her trust rarely, a product of a life Clint still knew only in bits and pieces. They had that in common. Hard to be let down when you expected nothing. It was safer that way.

If you kept your heart locked away, kept it secret like a diamond in a safe, no one could use it to hurt you. Natasha used emotion like a weapon, read people’s fears and desires on their faces and used them like a tool to get what she needed.

She wouldn’t be the one getting used. Not any more.

All the junior agents in SHIELD were terrified of her. Clint could see it in the way they edged around her in the halls, the way they never quite met her eyes. Then again, most of them shit their pants when Coulson so much as looked at them, so it wasn’t purely a Natasha thing.

(He was kind of disappointed they weren’t more scared of him. Clearly he needed to try harder.)

Those people, though. The ones who thought Natasha was cold. They didn’t know her. They’d never seen the way her whole face creased when she truly, genuinely smiled, or heard the sound of her laugh. They’d never seen her dance, grace in every step, or run for the pure joy of running, wind in her hair.

They’d never seen her in a yellow summery dress, barefoot, sunlight glinting in her hair, the breeze making her hem swish against her legs. They’d never seen her wrapped in a giant towel with her hair curling as it dried. They’d never lain at her side in a bed that was too small or curled around her trying to conserve body heat. They’d never knocked back shots with her or fallen asleep on the couch with her while watching reality housewives.

They’d never felt her small hand slip into theirs, standing at the funeral of someone who was gone and shouldn’t be. They’d never woken up gasping from nightmares and been lulled back to sleep with her fingers gently combing through their hair.

And they’d never had her at their backs, watching them, with them every step of the way. There was no one else Clint would choose to be by his side.

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t an easy woman to know, but she made every last second worth it.

**_End_ **


End file.
